Loyalty programs come in many forms. Any program that allows a user to earn points or rewards for every purchase or qualifying event is a form of loyalty program. Examples might include a program such as a frequent flyer program that awards points for every mile traveled. Another example might be a “buy four, get the fifth free” type promotion at a coffee shop or a hair salon. Another example might be a program at a grocery store that awards points for every dollar spent. The goal of loyalty programs is to give a user an incentive to return to the merchant frequently and to purchase promoted items.
Many different processes exist to log a user's purchases into a loyalty program. Users may swipe a card at a point of sale terminal to sign in to the program. Some loyalty programs are tracked by a credit card or other financial account. The simplest logging program is a punch card. With a punch card, a merchant can “punch” a card with a stamp or a hole-puncher or any other manner of logging a loyalty instance.
A “punch” can include any suitable method and process used to log a user's loyalty instance. For example, every time a user buys a coffee in a “buy four, get the fifth free,” the user will receive a “punch.” Every time a user shops at a grocery store and logs a product purchase, the user will log a “punch.” The term “product(s)” should be interpreted to include tangible and intangible products, as well as services.
The increase in the use of Smartphones and other mobile devices in financial transactions, has led many merchants and users to desire to keep their loyalty programs on applications operating on mobile devices or in another digital format, for example, “online.” Users can employ the mobile devices to scan a barcode or a quick response (“QR”) code to track that a user has made a qualifying purchase.
To use a mobile device with a loyalty program, a user may need to download an application. While a loyalty application may be available for the user to download from a loyalty program system, the user may not desire to perform the application download while in a merchant location at a point of sale device. For example, the user may not want to wait for the application to download while in line at a merchant. Alternatively, the user may prefer to download the application while on the user's home Wi-Fi or the user may desire time to consider the benefits of the loyalty program. While the user may not want to wait for a download, the user also may not want to sacrifice the qualifying punch from the visit.
If the user declines to download a loyalty application, the merchant may desire to offer the user an incentive to download the application later and also to reward the user for the initial purchase or for the progression earned through a specific action, for example, visiting the merchant's location.
For these reasons and others, the users desire a manner of obtaining an initial loyalty punch even if the user has not downloaded the loyalty application.